My Ex-Mate Mr. Bean

The nail-bitingly boring life of sitting - on a standard squeaky non-ergonomic
office chair - in a cubicle at my previous place of employment is long over.
I'm right now enjoying life as a productive, self-employed entrepreneur
with an average six-figure income and a boosted ego, which is emblazoned
on my name cards! It's another story about the famous big fish in a small
pond - I'll tell you about it another time.

But even now I can
still clearly recall my former daily frustrating working environment in
my mind. Alex who occupied the hidden cubicle (it was behind a waste-of-space
huge pillar) on my left gawking at the Chinese porn VCD movies he played
on his computer screen. Then Wendy on the far right corner who always
complained about her unsatisfying sex life (she's forty with off and on
boyfriends and confessed that she had never experienced orgasm). Annie
who sat across from my cubicle who continuously bragged on how she had
successfully got rid of one inch of her excess flabby fat, and last but
not least of course, my beloved mate Mr. Bean. He was the stereotypical
co-worker who always tried to backstab me so I looked bad in front of
our bosses. This wonderful person filled the chamber next to mine.

Mr. Bean, an office nick name inherited for his uncanny resemblance
in both facial expression and movement to the famous comedian, was my
pain in the neck colleague who made my relatively cheerful life almost
mental. Not to mention one of the reasons why I quit my job as the Company's
Public Relations bunny.

On numerous occasions, I caught him either taking credit for his colleague's
work, spreading bad rumours about somebody in the office who had just
earned a promotion, or simply laughing too hard every time his boss made
one of his not-so-funny sexist jokes.

Mr. Bean is an Indonesian of Chinese decent. Don't mistake me for
an anti non-native, as my best friend and in fact a lot of my friends
also belong to the same group. He's just an absolute self-appointed brown
nose in the office despite his skin colour or origins.

I remember how he always made so much fuss every time there was a
small-scale riot, meaningless demonstration or frankly even a herd of
street people waiting in line for free T-shirts. And how he was so afraid
driving alone from his home to work because of that reason. The racist
movement at some stage has obviously traumatised him. As everybody knows,
during some of the politically driven demonstrations over the years our
yellow-skinned brothers and sisters have sometimes become the scapegoat.
One day, I saw him coming to work wearing the black cap (introduced by
ex-President Soeharto as the nationalist attribute) and the Moslem praying
carpet flung on his shoulder. Da! He's not a Moslem. He's not even religious
at all. And yes sure, nobody could recognise his eyes and skin, of course.
I mean, why would anybody pretend to be somebody that they are not? If
you have done nothing wrong, what are you afraid of?

Do you see the point here? He's the kind of person who would do anything
to be 'safe'.

There's always at least one person in every office that acts like
Mr. Bean. I just didn't understand why I had to be the unfortunate one
to be both working with and sitting beside him.

The D-day, or doom day, finally arose when one morning I found my
table and chair, which were arranged neatly according to the 'feng-shui'
advice my best friend gave me, shifted almost a meter away from their
original spot! The office boy told me later on that apparently Mr. Bean
had come to work and quickly rearrange the office interior earlier that
morning.

"Mr. Bean said that he needed more space for the new potted plant
he just bought," explained the o-boy. The plant was a twenty-centimetre
tall bonsai Ficus.

People like him have skin as thick as a dried and stuffed armadillo.
There was no point arguing with him. I moved my stuff back in silence.
Fighting back was only making me sink to his level.

That was the point when I realised that I didn't deserve to be hassled
by somebody like Mr. Bean whilst working for somebody else. I was a member
of the DINK association, which stands for the Dual Income with No Kids,
and my husband also has a full-time job. For a short moment I dreamt of
getting pregnant and spoiling myself drying up my husband's platinum credit
cards by daily spa treatments as I contemplated what I'd do with my time
if I decided to quit my job.

Well, I decided to be what I am now instead. Doesn't have anything
to do with the subjects I studied for six years in the university, of
course. But, hey, a woman has got to do what a woman has got to do!

Until now, as far as I know, nobody enjoys Mr. Bean's company in the
office anymore, including his bosses (when they finally realised how manipulative
Mr. Bean actually had been) and now he's stuck there with no corporate
ladder to climb. He's probably going to spend the rest of his life kissing
somebody else's behind. The only thing, besides being ignorant, that he's
good at.

In the end, I guess I should thank Mr. Bean for helping me realise
that I didn't have to put up with him for long. Like it or not, he actually
made me stand up on my own two feet. Now I'm no longer restricted by the
stretched nine or ten hour per day job, listening to grumpy bosses who
made five times more salary than me yet have absolutely no life whatsoever
outside their office cubicles - which were only slightly bigger than mine.
What a nonsensical sacrifice! Well God bless you Mr. Bean, go ahead make
other people's life miserable so they can end up as lucky as me!